Call Sumo is known as a smart call tracking software to identify the calls, filter your existing cal...View MoreCall Sumo is known as a smart call tracking software to identify the calls, filter your existing calls or marketers so that you can find which of your marketing efforts are driving more phone calls or conversions. This in order allows you to focus on the particular calls/leads that generate conversions.

Today’s consumers inhabit an omnichannel world. Unfortunately, many companies fail to realize this and force people who consider themselves evolved onto paths of customer engagement that fail to meet ...View MoreToday’s consumers inhabit an omnichannel world. Unfortunately, many companies fail to realize this and force people who consider themselves evolved onto paths of customer engagement that fail to meet their needs and feel antiquated. These businesses must move to the next level if they hope to attract people to their brand and then build a sense of loyalty to keep them there.

Artificial intelligence (AI) could be just the solution for companies looking for a convenient, informed, and intelligent way to connect with customers during any part of their buying journey. The result of implementing AI in this manner is an improved journey for customers that feels more personal and integrated. The entire experience will feel more natural and less forced for them.

AI is nothing short of a game-changer for the entire customer experience (CX). It’s important for businesses to understand how AI applies to the CX as well as research companies already benefiting from implementing AI into their CX.

Why Businesses Need to Include AI as Part of the Customer Experience

No business can afford to overlook the importance of CX. It is what drives growth during successful periods as well as the greatest risk when things aren’t going as well. To enhance the CX, companies should consider incorporating data insights as a primary marketing tool. However, businesses must also realize that customers often exhibit chaotic behavior and that datasets are often scattered and incomplete. Undefined rules makes for ambiguous criteria to measure success. Datasets for the CX can truly be a nightmare for developers of AI.

Despite the complexity of customer data sets, AI can provide critical insights into the CX. Call center professionals and other sales personnel who serve customers directly currently have no way to understand the entire history of a customer and to glean the most important insights all while speaking to the customer in real time.

It’s not possible to manually program automated systems with every potential rule relating to the history of every customer. That means that providing a streamlined CX across every touchpoint requires AI developers to uncover patterns from numerous points of data. This is how AI thrives.

How to Implement AI Successfully to Improve the CX

The ability to implement and apply AI into the CX requires the use of all three of the following:

Unification of Data

This concept is essential for any brand that wishes to analyze customer behavior effectively. The more information provided to AI, the richer the insights it can provide. What was once an overwhelming task is now possible to complete quickly and with minimal expense.

Customer journey software programs that offer a platform for analytics makes it possible to complete the data unification task for a small percentage of what it would have cost to obtain services from dedicated data providers before AI came on the scene. Some data integration even comes to companies at no cost. The simpler sources enables companies to put sets of data together within one to three days. It’s no longer the dreaded and tedious chore that it once was.

Delivery of Insights in Real Time

Before AI can impact the CX, the insights it provides need to be available to customers at every touchpoint of their journey. The ability to integrate all touchpoints is crucial to engaging customers in real time.

The typical platform offering SaaS includes APIs as well at the ability to integrate data from several third parties. In fact, they consider an essential aspect of proposing value to their clients. It would make things easier on marketing teams if all data from touchpoints was available directly from APIs, but that is not reality yet.

Besides extensive data streams available through SaaS, most companies depend on several sources of touchpoint data. This includes things like customer care, payment platforms, product interfaces, and point-of-sale systems. The patchwork of sources makes it challenging to provide actionable insights in real time.

Analytics platforms for tracking customer journeys now include multiple API options to help pull all of this data together. Integrated touchpoint data in real time is highly valuable and doesn’t cost as much as businesses might assume.

Business Context

AI delivers results for isolated and simple interactions by understanding the basic functions of campaigns and emails. CallSumo’s CRM platforms and web analytics use this reality to their advantage. However, customer journeys across multiple channels would be an outdated notion when relying on touchpoints from similar product categories.

The journey of each customer is as unique as fingerprints. Companies need to understand their own touchpoint sets as well as the method they use for implementing these types of engagement for the CX.

AI requires context before it can deliver any type of value. Context in this sense refers to more than labeling interactions such as order fulfillment and inbound customer calls. AI needs to know why these events are significant and how they shape the behavior of the customer. To achieve this, it needs to know the touchpoints and journey that shaped KPIs and the impact of behavior by the customer. The behavior could be related to customer satisfaction, profitability, lifetime value of a customer, revenue, or similar factors.

After obtaining this data, AI goes beyond simply finding the best action to take next or the preferred customer audience. Appropriate business context means that AI locates tactics and touchpoints that help to determine customer behavior as is relates to the way that the business primarily measures its performance.

The Application of AI to Improve the Customer Experience

Once you understand what it requires to apply AI successfully to the CX, it’s time to learn more about specific applications and how AI uses them to disrupt a variety of aspects of CX by bringing together real-time insights, unifying all data, and incorporating context in business.

A Big Change to Customer Service

The biggest effect of AI will likely be the transformation of customer service to a hassle-free and automated experience. As mentioned above, call center professionals, sales personnel, and others who serve customers directly have no way of knowing, much less understanding, the entire previous history of a customer before the current conversation. The good news is that AI makes it entirely possible. Here’s how:

Chat Bots

Powered by AI, a chat bot is an automated customer service agent used in a variety of settings. Chat bots mimic interactions between humans and offer immediate and personalized responses to customers 24 hours a day. This capability eliminates the inevitable and frustrating delay as well as potential errors when handling customer concerns and complaints.

Virtual Assistants

Virtual assistants operated by AI can answer questions as well as obey commands. It can even offer personal shopping assistance to online customers. It does this by asking simple questions and directing customer to the right location.

Eliminate Clicks with Predictive Personalization

Thanks to AI, businesses can create naturally integrative experiences that coincide with the everyday lives of customers. It won’t be necessary for consumers to change the way they normally communicate when speaking with a brand representative. Intelligent customization and prediction will give customers the impression that the company tailored every experience solely for them.

AI makes it possible for companies to evaluate the inventories of individual shoppers as well as their unique behaviors as a consumer. This allows them to do such things as send certain items to the customer’s home before he or she runs out of it. It will also be easier for customers to request help from AI technology because it will have emotions that enable a smoother and better streamlined CX across every channel.

Customer Analytics Powered by AI Offer Rich Insights

It’s an optimal experience for the customer when a company remembers him or her and provides individualized attention, consideration, and respect from the start to the end of the journey. This is possible thanks to the ability to mine insights from more than a billion individual customer journeys quickly and efficiently. This task was previously overwhelming due to its tedious nature.

The beauty of customer analytics enabled by AI is that it can comb through vast and complex sets of data to uncover new opportunities for business you didn’t know existed. This gives you the chance to prioritize the most useful insights without having to sift though large volumes of data yourself.

AI in this situation can uncover every relationship that exists within the data without anyone needing to program it to do so. That means it can predict how a customer might act in the future with a high degree of accuracy as well as find the inhibitors and drivers behind performance metrics.

• What behavior by customers indicate a churn or a similar future outcome?

• What actions has your team taken to improve the CX that have most successful or most unsuccessful outcomes?

• Who are the ideal customers to spend your time interacting with to ensure

your outreach sees maximum impact?

B2B Companies and AI Implementation

B2B businesses can benefit just as much as B2C by introducing the concept of AI into the CX. Tools enabled by AI automate customer-facing tasks to enhance CX and boost productivity to unprecedented levels.

AI can create new data where none previously existed and predict future behavior of customers based on this data. A good example of this is Einstein, the AI technology used by Salesforce. Einstein analyzes conversations with customers as they occur and applies algorithms from machine learning to better understand the customer perspective. The AI technology alerts sales managers when an opportunity arises in real time to improve the CX, upsell or cross-sell, or solve a problem for a customer.

Bringing All the Parts Together

AI gives marketers the opportunity to convert multi-channel and multi-siloed enterprises into one persona that understands, remembers, and responds to achievements and challenges of the customer in personalized ways. Using the tool called One Voice allows for a meaningful, rather than a purely mechanical, interaction.

However, it can present a challenge in deciding the right way to start development and processes to collect the most useful customer data. It also requires the building of AI models and algorithms. Many businesses find it nearly impossible to accomplish such a task without the benefit of outside help. This is due to the need to create new apps, capabilities, and systems because some disparate systems are not ready for AI implementation. Many business owners are just now realizing that AI can dramatically improve the CX. The problem is that they have no idea how to get started.

Thankfully, our AI-based platform analytics for the customer journey deliver customer experiences that will make a quick and memorable impact. The time has passed to move customer engagement out of the cost center and realize that it’s a smart investment in customer loyalty and behavior. AI can enhance customer engagement significantly for those who are willing to invest in it.

Marketers currently use artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, in a wide range of applications. Search engines like Bing and Google use it to provide people with more intelligent results leadi...View MoreMarketers currently use artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, in a wide range of applications. Search engines like Bing and Google use it to provide people with more intelligent results leading them to delivery drones and personal assistants by Amazon and a self-driving car by Uber. This leaves many to wonder how marketing will be affected by different types of AI as they use it to improve return on investment (ROI) and make smarter business decisions.

So just what is AI? One simple definition is that AI involves non-human entities performing actions based on human behavior. Over time, AI robots can improve responses by analyzing customer responses. This is a big improvement over pre-programmed and possibly inaccurate responses. Below are several practical applications that AI developers and marketers should learn about as much as possible.

AI-Powered Predictive Marketing

Automation offers many benefits to marketers. However, businesses that plan to implement it must invest in computer-based learning and apply it at scale. It’s best to do this both before and during implementation of automatic processes that depend on evaluation by humans.

Some marketers are fortunate to have advanced tools for statistical purposes such as behavior information, demographic data, purchase history, and analytics software from a variety of sources. Even so, only a human can determine the actual results of a marketing campaign without using AI. Naturally, every marketer desires to improve his or her understanding of customer behavior and activity as it occurs in real time. Predictive marketing can help achieve this. The concept of predictive marketing involves forecasting success by using AI.

With AI implemented, a computer can analyze a website visitor’s unique actions and learn to predict what he or she might do next. In other words, you can predict and understand why your customers have come to your website and what they hope to accomplish during the online visit. This enables your company to deliver a personalized call to action at just the right time. Best of all, you can use this tool in a variety of ways.

For example, AI makes it possible to employ predictive marketing to increase the hit rate of your email campaigns. Instead of batch and blast campaigns or simply guessing, you can evaluate the previous shopping history of the customer as well as engagement rates from past emails to similar customers. This makes it easier to create new and more effective marketing campaigns.

Another example is using AI-based intelligence to obtain real-time stock updates from local stores and use this information in customer emails. You could also implement a higher level of machine learning to provide personalized banner advertising on your website.

You can expect AI to improve as it learns. Eventually, it will offer visitors to your website recommendations based on products that people often purchase together or match it to email campaigns that show a more personal touch.

Improve CX with Chatbots

Chatbots, which first became popular in 2016 and 2017, are a tool that provide customers with an experience that doesn’t include the human element. By 2021, industry analysts expect chatbots to grow into an industry worth $3 billion dollars in the United States alone. While some people view chatbots as a slight improvement to the online inquiry form or a way to deal with unhappy customers, the software is poised to have a much greater reach in the future.

Currently, various marketing brands are devising chatbots that can advise customers and easily transition into the role of a sales representative. At the same time, other chatbots gain even more detailed information about prospective customers. Sophistication and level of intelligence are both key when it comes to developing a truly useful chatbot.

Marketers can consider a chatbot intelligent once it recognizes and responds to the needs of the user. The intelligence it possesses is what gives it the ability to handle all customer conversations and scenarios with confidence. This includes everything from understanding the tone and mood of customers to gathering data and guiding them towards making a purchase. Many people report that they enjoy interacting with chatbots, especially as they become more advanced.

Plug and play is a great AI tool but there’s more to come. One of the top chatbots in 2018 is Zendesk Answer Bot. This customer service platform answers questions in real-time and assists customers with purchase decisions.

Chatbots are an excellent first step for first-time users of artificial intelligence (AI). Developing your own chatbot can help you create a niche such as offering assistance in a variety of languages or recognizing phrases unique to your line or work or ongoing customer issues. In the future, you could find yourself developing a chatbot that understands marketing campaigns in the same way that a human member of your marketing team would. You might even be able to skip weekly meetings and download information from the Chabot instead.

Smart Homes Marketing

There’s a strong likelihood that you know someone who has Alexa or another smart home device. These AI-powered machines can do everything from play the type of music its user requests to dimming the lights in the home to acting as a virtual assistant that responds to voice commands.

As a marketer, the popularity of these devices means that the relevance of conversational marketing will only increase. You should plan to tailor your content for easy use by home assistants by including accurate answers to specific questions as well as long-tail search terms.

Improve Understanding with Image Recognition

It’s probably not surprising to learn that AI leads the way in image recognition search marketing. Also called computer vision, companies as diverse as L’Oreal and Coca Cola use it to scan social media as intelligently as possible. This enables them to strategically place branded messages with photos related to their brand image on websites across the Internet.

Another name for these ads is “in-image.” Instead of relying only on text advertising, an in-image ad applies pictures to the top of other pictures to provide customers with a unique real-time experience. As an example, an existing image of a disorganized desk could have a fun pop-up ad for a desk organizer. When marketers search for images, they should ensure that it’s as relevant as possible to the content that already exists. This enables them to deliver the most appropriate message at the ideal time.

An image-based AI experience is useful for online marketers who want to glean data about their brand without investing hours of work into manual research and conducting surveys with people who already know about the brand. Rather than face an unpleasant tweet directed at your brand by an angry customer, you can serve brand photos of products on social media directly.

This technology enables brands to leverage a more sophisticated understanding of how many people they have promoting or detracting from their brand online. Because of this, a change in metrics is necessary as well. By switching to image recognition, marketing agencies need to increased attention quality, promoter sources, and engagement along with several other metrics to achieve the desired results.

Enhancing UX

A recent article in UX Magazine indicates that AI and UX will change at the same time. Naturally, this will have a big impact on marketing. According to a recent announcement from Adobe, a program called Sensei will enable AI designers to edit, patch, or possibly recreate specific scenes.

Squarespace, Wix, and other mass marketing website developers already use AI to help with UX and other types of existing technology. This enables users to make minor decisions more seamlessly.

Anyone who has ever groaned about the monotony of working on repetitive tasks will enjoy working with AI and allowing it to take over the time-consuming task of analyzing data. Many types of website design feature this type of work already, but it’s another area that AI-powered UX could apply to content marketing. Specifically, it works well with content written mostly for SEO purposes or to answer certain types of questions from prospective customers.

While you shouldn’t expect AI to write the next best seller, it could be the ideal tool if you want to pitch mass content to find unique locations and buyer personas. It’s far superior to the currently existing tools of article spinning and scrapping. If you have ever read anything produced by either of these software programs, you know how robotic and useless it sounds.

With AI, you can combine the best conversational skills from smart devices and chatbots and apply it to copywriting. This allows you to develop content that appeals to people who are searching for your product or service using long-tail keywords. AI learns the patterns and rules of your current content and then produces new content. Although it’s specific to your industry, you can apply it to various niches. This provides you with maximum flexibility as you create your marketing campaigns.

We encourage you to contact us at Call Sumo if you have additional questions about this technology or to request a demonstration.

When it comes to shopping, people have more choices and more opportunities to research than ever. It can be tough for marketers to keep up with how customers interact with their brand. For starters, i...View MoreWhen it comes to shopping, people have more choices and more opportunities to research than ever. It can be tough for marketers to keep up with how customers interact with their brand. For starters, it requires monitoring big data. While companies are spending millions to optimize and understand the customer journey, many are overlooking essential data provided in every phone call.

The Phone is Not Dead

What is call tracking Approximately two-thirds of the world’s population, or 4.77 billion people, own a mobile phone. This explains why people make over 85 billion calls to businesses every year. Click-to-call technology is the main reason behind the surge. It allows people to browse the Internet on their phone and then call a company with a touch of a button. Click-to-call will only grow in popularity, reaching 13.7 billion dollars in spending in the next three years.

Although approximately two-thirds of people conduct product research online, they still prefer to speak to a real person before moving forward with a purchase. This explains why conversion rates from calls are 20 percent higher than clicks. Companies that want to succeed as we close in on the next decade must be able to track offline activity, i.e., the phone call.

What is Call Tracking and Call Intelligence?

Call tracking enables companies to understand how a website visitor arrived there and the actions he or she took leading up to a phone call. Knowing the reason for calls makes it easier for marketers to evaluate which campaigns provide the best return on investment (ROI). Only five percent of businesses in developed countries utilize this technology. Businesses that choose to enable call tracking can get far ahead of the competition before they even know what happened.

what is call tracking With call intelligence, marketers gain extensive insight into the journey of every customer by evaluating it in terms of the phone call. Call Sumo’s call intelligence software allows for visitor integration with third-party data platforms and second-party data sources. Tracking each customer’s journey across multiple channels, sessions, and devices ultimately provides a detailed and more accurate view.

Our algorithms then deliver the call to the agent most qualified to serve the customer based on his or her profile. This can include the source of marketing, past conversion history, and other data specific to that person. With our algorithms in place, your company can deliver a more personalized experience to the customer and have a higher likelihood of conversion.

How to Ensure Calls Remain Relevant

Customers who make a call have a vested interest, whether that is a purchase or problem resolution. Call Sumo’s actionable insight enables your agents to provide the ultimate customer experience without the awkwardness of reading from a script. Switching the focus from tracking visitors instead of campaigns, combined with call intelligence, can help your company achieve this. Contact Call Sumo today to find out how.

It wasn’t that long ago that people took it for grated they would speak to another live person when they called the customer service department or the main phone number for a business. However, corpor...View MoreIt wasn’t that long ago that people took it for grated they would speak to another live person when they called the customer service department or the main phone number for a business. However, corporate growth and the explosion of technology have pushed many organizations towards using artificial intelligence (AI) when communicating with customers on the phone or online. Companies have now grown beyond just using automated telephone prompts with the ability to recognize voice.

The modern version of AI can now conduct live chats, automatically send emails, route customer phone calls, and much more. In fact, a recent marketing industry research study indicates that more than half of all contact centers in the United States use some form of AI. In the future, additional contact centers as well as various other types of businesses will begin to incorporate AI.

A 2016 survey by Accenture Technology Vision indicates that more than two-thirds of business executives express interest is using AI. This is up significantly just since 2014. It’s obvious to see that the American workforce must embrace this new era of AI technology to remain competitive. AI is here to stay, and it will have a significant impact on the way people in business communicate in the future. Here’s how we think that is going to happen.

AI and Online Customer Service

If you have visited any website lately, it’s likely that you noticed the appearance of a chat bot. It might seem as though a real person made that happen, but the reality is that it’s more than likely a conversation powered by AI. The company whose website you visited had a programmer create automated responses based on some of the most frequent questions that customers ask. This is just one example of how businesses use AI to provide online customer support.

AI used in a customer support role online is widely accepted by most people. It’s also much more advanced than it was in the beginning. For example, AI-powered chat boxes can answer common and straightforward questions such as the physical location of the business.

Facebook was one of the first online companies to grow beyond using AI to answer basic questions to employing approximately 11,000 chat bots in their email app called Messenger. These AI-powered chat bots allow users of Facebook to perform a wide range of tasks such as finding a movie that matches their interests to requesting pizza delivery.

How AI Improves the Customer Experience

Customer service departments that use AI can expect to see many benefits. For starters, it’s far cheaper to employ AI than a live operator. The cost is 25 cents per call using AI versus up to $20 when a person answers the phone. When AI handles calls with common inquiries, it frees up the human staff to attend to other duties and spend more time with people who need it. Businesses can count on AI to handle many common requests from customers. This leads to less time on hold and live agents who answer calls feeling more refreshed and ready to serve the customer.

Possible Drawback with Incorporating AI into Customer Service

Human interactions come with a variety of subtleties that AI cannot yet interpret. Without the human element present, it can be challenging for companies to create and manage real customer relationships. Ultimately, this could affect loyalty to the brand. AI doesn’t presently know how to handle human emotions as well as social norms, empathy, and other types of human interactions. This can cause big problems for a business, which Microsoft learned the hard way in 2016.

That year, the company used AI to create a chat bot that spoke like a typical 19-year-old American woman. Microsoft targeted the bot to the 18 to 24-year-old demographic on several social media sites. It wasn’t long before the bot began repeating racists messages and political statements that it picked up from the conversation of America’s young adults. Tech engineers quickly learned that it isn’t necessary for bots to repeat all types of human interactions and that they need to get better at choosing only the good stuff.

Many industry analysts predict that it will be difficult to distinguish a bot from a human in the future. Until then, they work alongside each other and try to provide the most useful information for those they serve.

AI in Brand Compliance and Communication

Developers of AI hope that it can prevent errors made by real people. Mistakes happen because human beings are alive as well as often unpredictable and emotional. A person may grow angry when dealing with a difficult customer while an AI-powered bot can respond appropriately without the risk of inserting angry emotions. It’s also possible that the live agent could have things going on in his or her life that make it difficult to deal with people in general. It wouldn’t take much for a customer to push this person’s buttons. Unfortunately, this can lead to disastrous consequences and a tarnishing of the brand image.

The benefit of AI is that it has no human emotions or life stress that could interfere with providing excellent customer service even under trying circumstances. Programmers can ensure that it properly reads and responds to certain scenarios, phrases or keywords while remaining compliant with established company guidelines. While it’s possible that miscommunication may still take place, using AI eliminates the possibility of an emotional outburst.

Personalized Content and Automated Content Creation

AI is extremely useful for creating both personalized and automated content. One example is the written article that is easy for anyone to dissect mathematically. The Associated Press currently uses AI to create reports for minor league baseball teams as well as earning reports. It also uses AI to produces approximately 3,500 earning reports every quarter along with more than 10,000 recaps of minor league baseball games.

The potential for AI goes beyond the Associated Press to using it to produce marketing materials, press releases, and other types of communication for business. With AI automation, businesses can quickly produce personalized content in advertising, marketing, media, and more. This is expected to have significant consequences for the public relations industry since AI can find detailed data that continually provides personalized content to a specific audience.

The combination of big data and AI could create new opportunities in customer service, public relations, media, and marketing that seem beyond the realm of possibility right now but will be commonplace in the future.

In recent years, technologies such as algorithms and cloud-based data have made it possible for brands to explore using artificial intelligence (AI) to reach more customers as well as improve how they...View MoreIn recent years, technologies such as algorithms and cloud-based data have made it possible for brands to explore using artificial intelligence (AI) to reach more customers as well as improve how they interact with them. The technology is becoming popular and widespread. In a recent worldwide study, most senior executives reported that implementing AI has resulted in a more effective way to analyze data as well as provide new insights.

The same study indicates that business spending on AI is expected to exceed $30 billion dollars in the next three years. One way that brands have to differentiate themselves from one another is by implementing AI. Obtaining the insights that it has to offer is no longer optional. They’re a must for businesses that wish to succeed in today’s economy.

How Artificial Intelligence Works

For most companies, the primary purpose of AI is to improve the customer experience. Here are some of the most common ways they use it:

 To bid on ad space automatically and improve the visibility of ads

 Direct indecisive or upset customers to an online chat

 Effectively analyze large amounts of data to pick out the most important information

At its highest level, AI is a type of computer science that creates machines that can imitate human intelligence. Problem-solving and speech recognition are the two that most people have seen. It’s important to keep in mind that humans must still program AI to get it to complete the intended tasks.

How to Decide if AI is Right for You

When used appropriately and responsibly, AI can be a very powerful marketing tool. Of course, it isn’t the right choice for every brand and company, but it is something to seriously consider. With simple problems, investing in AI is likely not a cost-effective solution. However, it can help companies save time and money by creating innovative solutions to more complex problems..

According to an eMarketer survey conducted in 2017, 80 percent of respondents stated that AI played a major role in improving the efficiency of their marketing teams. They also credited AI with providing greater effectiveness and freeing up their time to focus on larger tasks that would bring increased revenue to the organization. AI is an excellent way to stand out from the competition. However, it requires a thorough understanding to derive the greatest benefit from it.

Factors to Consider Before Implementing AI

Besides not understanding AI correctly, it’s important not to use AI in potentially harmful ways. This could include concerns about customer privacy due to the large sets of data passing through AI, replacing human workers in favor of AI, and re-purposing parts of the AI system for personal gain. With the numerous privacy concerns that have recently arisen on social media platforms such as Facebook, marketing departments must take this potential misuse seriously.

At Call Sumo, we have seen our clients achieve improved revenue and customer loyalty by implementing AI safely and responsibly. We would be happy to help you do the same. Please contact us today to request more information.

Your mother always told you to be humble and not vain. However, we give you permission to break this rule when it comes to vanity phone numbers.

Understanding a Custom Phone Number

It you have ever wa...View MoreYour mother always told you to be humble and not vain. However, we give you permission to break this rule when it comes to vanity phone numbers.

Understanding a Custom Phone Number

It you have ever wanted a marketing strategy that’s truly unbeatable, you can’t go wrong with vanity phone numbers. Also called custom phone numbers, these are unique alphanumeric combinations that you use in place of a typical telephone number. The custom telephone number spells out a word, making it easier for your customers and prospects to remember. For example, a florist might have a vanity number of 1-800-FLOWERS. Another take-off on a custom phone number is to request repetitive numbers that are easy for people to remember. An example here would be 800-333-2222.

Besides being memorable for your customers, vanity phone numbers are customizable and personal. You alone get to chose what it is as long as no one else requested the same phone number before you. Typically, a custom phone number starts with 800, 888, or another toll-free variation. However, you can check with your local phone company to see if a vanity number with a local prefix is available.

Even if people only hear your custom phone number one time, they’re likely to remember it. The phone number can even help to explain your service or product. This type of phone number gives you a professional image, builds your brand, and increases your rate of inbound calls significantly.

Is a Vanity Number Right for You?

Nearly every type of business, regardless of size, can benefit from a vanity phone number. It allows you to increase your call rate and level of inbound activity. A vanity number is even more helpful if you already conduct a lot of business over the telephone. Since you rely on traffic from phone calls to meet sales goals, purchasing a vanity number will only increase your opportunity for conversions. This is also an ideal option for companies with locations across the country because a single phone number unites all the branches while reducing marketing costs and building a unifying strategy.

If you use billboard advertising, vanity phone numbers are the only way to go. No driver is going to remember the phone number otherwise. This is also true of print and online advertisements. With an attention span measuring in seconds, you need a unique way to get the average consumer to remember you.

More Benefits to Consider

This is one of the simplest ways to get a message out to customers about who you are and what your business does. It also tells them that they can get a hold of you quickly. The payoffs are nearly instant as well. Think of how many advertisements consumers see every day. It’s so many that they forget most of them within seconds. A recent study from Yankelovich, Inc., a well-respected marketing agency, estimates that people see 5,0000 ads every single day. There’s no way you can stand out unless you invest in a custom phone number. It makes you look savvy and unique as well.

You want customers to call you, so you need to make it easy for them. With a vanity phone number already in their mind, it’s that much simpler to do. It’s an easy strategy on your part to increase the number of incoming phone calls to your company. Data from Yankelovich, Inc. suggests that you can increase inbound calls by up to 50 percent and that 75 percent of consumers exposed to your vanity phone number will remember it.

It’s an obvious statement, but more phone calls mean more sales and greater revenue. Customers that arrive at your company this way are more likely to follow through with purchasing a product or service than those who saw an ad in an email or online campaign. They’re already very interested in the product or service and just need answers to a few questions before completing the transaction. If you want a piece of that action and desire to stay ahead of your competitors, signing up for a customized phone number is one of the easiest ways you can achieve these goals.

How to Get a Custom Phone Number for Your Business

We hope that you’re convinced of the need for a vanity phone number. When you’re ready to reap these incredible benefits, just contact Call Sumo to get it set up. Don’t worry if you’re not sure exactly which custom phone number you want to request. An account manager will learn more about you and your business and then suggest a unique and memorable phone number that your customers will love.

The Internet provides several convenient ways to communicate, but the most personal and meaningful conversations still take place offline. While you can learn a lot about your customers by tracking th...View MoreThe Internet provides several convenient ways to communicate, but the most personal and meaningful conversations still take place offline. While you can learn a lot about your customers by tracking their online habits, the only way to truly get to know their interests, opinions, and challenges is to talk to them. Speaking to a customer or a prospect on the phone reduces the chances of misinterpreting what they are really saying. Far from being old-fashioned, phone calls remain an integral part of the customer service experience.

Phone Calls Can Teach You if You’re Willing to Learn

In addition to being more personal, phone calls to businesses are still the most common way that people interact. According to a State of the Mobile Experience report from Invoca, three times as many people reported that they prefer to speak to someone at a business directly rather than complete an online form. Another report, this one from BIA/Kelsey, states that calls initiated from a mobile phone to a business will reach 162 billion annually by 2019. This makes sense when you consider just how many people use a mobile phone every day.

As a digital marketer, it’s easy enough to retrieve mobile data regarding mobile engagement. However, you’re often left with little to no insight about what’s happening with telephone conversations taking place at your company. The result is a lack of personalization that people crave. When you don’t know what takes place during these offline conversations, you will attempt to personalize your company website with the wrong message or send customers a follow-up email that doesn’t relate at all to their most recent conversation. Call intelligence is the solution.

With call intelligence, you gain insight into the conversations that prospects and customers have with representatives of your company. Not only does this allow you to understand them better, it allows for greater personalization based on the customer’s multi-channel journey.

Call Sumo has identified the following four ways that call intelligence can aid you in taking a more holistic approach to personalization based on online and offline interactions.

Improve Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing enables you to educate prospects and ensure they remain engaged with your company. Imagine a prospect calling to learn more about your business and how it differs from a competitor. When your sales representative can answer perfectly and the competitor cannot, it makes you look much better to the prospect.

Unfortunately, nurturing without personalization can come across as spam-like to the prospect. That means your sales representatives offers the same generic response to everyone that is more common at the top of the sales funnel. The lead receives an email discussing things that he or she has no interest in and writes off your organization as irrelevant. It would have been better to send a new buyer guide than something so generic.

When you have the right tools, it’s simple to sync marketing automation with call data. This ensures that each prospect travels to the appropriate track for nurturing and receives relevant follow-up.

Re-targeting Done Right

The process of re-targeting turns the prospect’s attention to a highly personalized ad. As an example, imagine that a prospect spoke to one of your sales representatives extensively at a tradeshow. When he or she does an online search to learn more about your company, a targeted ad appears. It takes the prospect directly to your landing page after he or she clicks on it. This person doesn’t want to complete a form. He or she is ready to initiate a phone call to learn more and make a purchase right now.

Re-targeting with an incomplete picture sends prospects the wrong message. This happens when your company’s re-targeting platform is not up to speed enough to know about any offline conversations. The result is that the prospect receives re-targeting directed at an unconverted visitor offering a discount. The potential customer realizes that he or she would have paid full price and feels misled and angry. Although a poor and impersonal customer experience, it happens all too often.

Nail Your Website Personalization

Static websites just won’t cut it anymore. With web personalization, your company marketers can create a unique digital experience for each visitor by creating content for them. This is based on the preferences they have demonstrated in previous interactions.

Personalization can only be effective when it considers the multi-channel journey of the customer. Disregarding this step means your personalization comes out all wrong. A good example of personalization is listing a telephone number and providing mobile customers an easy way to reach you by including a click-to-call button. Another good example is making sure that sales representatives know about a customer’s last interactions with your business the next time that person calls.

Combining personalization with call intelligence gives your company the ability to show website visitors content that relates to the product they just discussed over the phone. This spurs them to take the next step in the buying journey.

Include Your Sales Reps in the Process

Personalized marketing is great, but it shouldn’t stop after a customer has made his or her digital journey. You could quickly and easily lose a customer if he or she hears generic questions and a general pitch after getting this far in the buying process. That means your sales reps must have real-time data available about each caller and their history of engagement.

Call intelligence combined with a strong marketing automation platform provides important demographic data. This allows you to share information about the campaigns each customer has interacted with in the past. Having this data available in real-time gives sales reps a deeper level of insight to make the conversation more personal for the customer.

We live in an electronic era, which makes it easy to believe that online interactions are all that matters. However, it’s essential to draw on the information discussed during phone calls to understand and personalize the entire journey for the customer. People want to feel like they matter to the companies they choose to do business with, and a personalized experience is the best way to ensure that they feel heard.

As a business owner, you understand the importance of your customers having an excellent experience every time they call your company. If they don’t receive it every time, you might not hear from them...View MoreAs a business owner, you understand the importance of your customers having an excellent experience every time they call your company. If they don’t receive it every time, you might not hear from them again. That’s where phone call conversion optimization comes into play. Even when people make a purchase online, they like having a real person answer their questions about a product or service. If they’re put on hold, treated rudely, or given incorrect information, you have just lost your lead to the competition.

Call Opening

A caller forms an impression of your company during the first few seconds of a call, but many businesses fail to appreciate that. This explains the abundance of companies that use an automated pre-recorded message to greet their callers. If you want to improve conversion rates from customer phone calls, you need to improve their experience. It really is as simple as that. Call Sumo provides the technology to listen to conversations between sales personnel and callers. You can then analyze common factors of calls that didn’t convert to sales.

It’s helpful to think of every phone call as an opportunity to obtain customer feedback. By listening carefully, you can hear and notate common objections. With this list in mind, you can work on improving your company’s bottom line.

Phone Calls and Sales Conversions

If you’re like most small business owners, you have established your website to generate leads via phone calls. That means calls are an essential touchpoint in the path to customer conversion. Touchpoint is a place in the marketing channel at which a customer interacted with your brand. This can happen at any time before, during, or after he or she completed a conversion on your company’s website.

Identifying touchpoints is essential because it allows you to gain insight into the journey your customer took during a conversion. When you identify touchpoints after the conversion, it gives you better understanding into your customer’s level of satisfaction. Websites that sell high-dollar items online rely on customer phone calls to complete the conversion. By treating each phone call as a touchpoint, it becomes an essential aspect of multi-channel approach to marketing.

Tracking Your Customer Phone Calls

When you set up your website to generate leads via telephone calls, it’s essential to tie each call to its proper traffic source. This allows you to see which keywords and marketing channels are driving calls and which are not. With this information, you can increase or decrease your marketing budget in specific areas. Without call tracking, you’re just guessing on what produces results. This can be a costly game of trial and error.

Phone calls are an integral part of any marketing campaign, but businesses often overlook this fact. Instead, they focus on things like building brand awareness and customer engagement without realizi...View MorePhone calls are an integral part of any marketing campaign, but businesses often overlook this fact. Instead, they focus on things like building brand awareness and customer engagement without realizing that studying call data can help them achieve these lofty goals. Call tracking software from Call Sumo offers important benefits that can help your company capitalize on its most effective advertising methods.

What is call tracking, you ask? It’s a program that allows you to create unique telephone numbers for each of your advertising campaigns. We route the calls directly to your office so your agents can answer them like normal. It’s one of the easiest ways we know to measure advertising effectiveness and improve your return on investment.

Call Tracking Benefits You May Not Have Considered

As mentioned above, one of the most obvious benefits of Call Sumo’s call tracking software is that it enables you to quickly ascertain which advertising campaigns are producing results and which need more tweaking. It lets you know the volume of calls, where they came from, average length of call, performance of your PPC landing page, and most importantly, conversion rates. Some other important benefits of call tracking include:

• Ability to connect calls to specific searches: Knowing which keywords are driving calls is an effective planning tool for future advertising campaigns. This is especially true for calls made from a mobile device since these now outpace calls placed from a stationary phone.

• Call recording capability: There’s a good chance you have called a business and heard a recorded message tell you that your call will be recorded for quality assurance purposes. It’s in your best interest to use this same strategy for your own business. It allows you to hear for yourself whether agents are asking the right questions to drive conversions and how they respond to customers in general. You can expect better results from your agents when you provide them with additional training.

• No need to change call policies: Your salespeople can still follow the same scripts and answer calls in the same way, unless you tell them otherwise. The only difference is that your company will be receiving valuable data about every call it receives.

• Compare the effectiveness of advertising channels: Perhaps you advertise your company’s product or service on the radio, television, Internet, and through billboard ads. You need to know how effective each channel is so you can decide whether the investment you make is producing the results you desire.

These are just a handful of benefits you can expect with our call tracking software. Contact Call Sumo today to learn more or request a demonstration.

Despite dire predictions that the phone would go the way of the dinosaur, people make more phone calls today than any other time in history. Even though we live in an app-based and Internet-based worl...View MoreDespite dire predictions that the phone would go the way of the dinosaur, people make more phone calls today than any other time in history. Even though we live in an app-based and Internet-based world, people find comfort and clarity speaking to a live person. This is even true of millennials, the group predicted to practically never make another phone call. Businesses that want to provide an excellent customer experience simply can’t afford to overlook the importance of phone calls.

Phones by the Numbers

The number of people in the world and mobile phone subscriptions are nearly the same. They’re both around 6.8 billion. This is in addition to landlines, something that 40 percent of households in the United States still have. Phones aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Over the past 15 years or so, marketers have all but ignored phones in favor of email, social media, SEO, and PPC campaigns. One reason for this is the ease of measuring return on investment (ROI). However, many companies have ignored the need to track customers once they go offline and use the telephone. If they want to stay in business, they need to know what prompted the customer to call. They also need to know the channel he or she came through to make that call.

The ways that customers interact with companies and brands is expected to become even more complex in the next few years. Businesses need predictability and clarity now more than ever. The good news is that it’s not too late. By 2019, customers will make 162 billion calls to American businesses every year. Not tracking call data is like leaving money on the table and not looking back.

Understanding Click-to-Call

It shouldn’t surprise you to read that people complete more searches on smartphones than they do on computers. With click-to-call enabled, they can reach your company instantly. This allows them to resolve their issue right away without waiting for an email response. By 2019, money generated through click-to-call is expected to reach $2 trillion dollars. Taking on this feature requires companies to optimize the customer’s experience upon reaching the call center. It also necessitates better data management with every call.

Embrace the Phone, Don’t Fear It

The role of phone calls in marketing deserves the same scrutiny as other channels, if not more. Unfortunately, up to 95 percent of companies don’t have even basic call tracking in place. If your company is among that percentage, consider that 78 percent of people feel more confident after speaking to a live person and calls convert approximately 10 times as often as clicks do. Call Sumo has the solution. Give us a call today to learn more about how you can be tracking phone calls to provide better customer service and achieve higher profits.